at the
American Institute of Mathematics, San Jose, California
organized by
Emmanuel Abbe, Laurent Massoulie, and Elchanan Mossel
This has been a major theme of research in inference of planted models starting with the hidden clique problem where the problem in information theoretically solvable for much smaller cliques than what can be found algorithmically. Understanding the limitation of algorithms in other planted models has a physics interpretation. Understanding better such phenomena would benefit from a diversified workshop.
Interestingly, the study of phase transition for random and planted problems have resulted in new algorithms. For constraint satisfcation problems such an algorithm is survey propagation while in the context of the block model, linear algebra algorithms based on nonbacktracking operators proved useful. More algorithmic developments are expected to emerge from this quest.
The SBM is a canonical model for community detection, and its extensions allows one to capture various important questions in complex networks and machine learning. The workshop will also focus on extensions of the basic model, such as graphons and low-rank approximation models, and more generally on the inference of combinatorial structures.
The workshop schedule.
A report on the workshop activities.
A list of open problems.
Papers arising from the workshop: